Sunday, November 17, 2013

The video rental business as we used to know it-2

Being competitive with an online company which did not have much overhead and real estate burden to deal with, Blockbuster started to lose share and even imitate Netflix® by sending movies by mail but they came too late to the market and now have closed all their stores save for some franchises. And now with streaming all the rage, it was almost time that the demise would have reached its logical conclusion. I rarely see people nowadays taking out rental from a video store which have become increasingly rare in big cities as more competitors have come online and people prefer it that way. I use to go to neighborhood video stores and enjoyed the selection and not only in the United States but also in other countries but it was really a hassle to trek to these stores and select the movie and if it was not there then had to decide on something else.
And that is also one of the hated parts of physical video rental business that if the popular movie is not in stock when you want it, you had to either rent something else or go home empty handed or to another store to find out if they had it. Taking the time out to go and then wasting gas just to find out that the video store does not have your movie is no fun and it adds up to your video rental fees. And I would never want to experience this again so there will be very few people who would be sad of the demise physical video rental business.